


Split Seas

by chipofmint



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe, Bondage, Cuban Lance (Voltron), Dimension Travel, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Keith doesn't think Earth is Real, M/M, Multilingual Lance, Rating May Change, Romance, dancing under the stars, eventual sex on a boat, high seas adventures, klancebb17, multilingual Keith, slowish burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-17
Packaged: 2019-01-28 18:16:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12612508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chipofmint/pseuds/chipofmint
Summary: A hurricane sweeps Lance into an alternate dimension, where he is rescued by a ship cobbled together like nothing he's seen in Havana Bay. He soon learns that he has become one of the cross-dimensional “drifters” who are stuck in an alternate Earth covered in water. Drifters can still remember the land of Earth, whereas people like Keith have known nothing but stormy seas. Will Lance escape this place or drown in cold water and confused feelings for the home he’s lost and the strange man he’s discovered?





	1. Chapter 1

Clouds spiraled and palm trees bowed from the weight of the incoming tropical storm. From the gray sky came a persistent rain, pelting Lance’s skin raw as he ran from family house to house, all shaking in the category 1 hurricane winds. It wasn’t nearly as bad as Hurricane Matthew in ‘16, but the winds were strong enough to make Lance feel like he was getting blown off the face of the world. Hair disheveled, he stuck his head in the door, casting his eyes around to find his family.

“¿Dónde está Milagros?” he asked, water dripping from his clothes onto the carpet.

His sister shrugged, and his nephew was playing his Gameboy in the safest corner of the house, away from windows and doors.

He tried his older bro’s house again, its orange paint looking like an unripe fruit in the hurricane light, but his brother and wife were just as frantic as he was.

“She was just here a second ago!” his sister-in-law said, wringing her hands. “I was telling her she couldn’t go back to the beach to get her toy. While I was getting Christopher inside, she disappeared.”

“It’s okay Patricia. I’ll find her,” Lance promised, mouth in a thin line. “Maybe I should go by the beach?”

“I wouldn’t do that. It isn’t safe,” his brother warned, but then he saw Lance’s grim determination and knew there was no deterring his littlest brother.

“I’ll just check by really quickly and come right back.” He kissed his sister-in-law on the cheek and ran for the door. “I promise!”

Milagro was missing, and it was up to Uncle Lance to find her.

 

* * *

 

Ten minutes after he had left, a sleepy 5-year-old girl poked her head out from behind the dryer.

“Mamá?” she said, rubbing her eyes. “¿Dónde está el tío Lance?”

Her parents looked at each other in horror.

 

* * *

 

After a good scour of the beach and all of Milagro’s usual hiding places, like under the deck next to the old fishing hut, Lance was coming up empty.

He found the toy, half submerged in wet sand, and raised it to his face. The cheek had a tear in the fabric, but otherwise the little blue cat was fine. Lance looked back and forth to see if his baby niece was in sight. The rain bore down on him like pebbles, the impact harder in the rushing wind.

“Milagro!” he hollered against the wind, turning away from the ocean for a second. “Milagros, ven aquí!”

A roar built up in his ears, and he stiffened at the feeling of something coming at him from behind. He turned in time to see a wave three times his size materializing in the wind and the storm. Lance shrieked internally as it breached and fell down on his head.

He came up coughing, still holding onto the doll, half frantic. Luckily his hair wasn’t long enough to get in his eyes, but the sea water stung and churned around him.

Lance was a good swimmer, built for the sport, but no one swam in hurricane waters for good reason. While taking a second to get his bearings and figure out where the shore was, another wave came crashing over him, pulling him farther out to sea.

He had never been afraid of the sea, but something about this storm seemed more violent than normal. His legs kicked out but only enough to keep his head above water. From above, the rain poured down, and from below the ocean sucked on his body like a hungry mouth.

His normally narrow eyes widened in horror as a third and largest wave built in the distance. The water seemed to crackle like lightning, though no streaks of white came from the sky. The wind screamed as it approached.

“Oh, mierda,” he spat, gaping towards the wall of the water.

The crackling electric sound grew louder as he turned and frantically pawed at the sea towards the shore, but he might as well have not been swimming at all. The pull of the wave held him in place.

He looked back at the last second, and saw a gaping black chasm in the heart of the wave. It was spitting off energy like some strange dark matter. The edges of the rip in the world pulsed purple. Lance closed his mouth tight in the last second, heart pounding in his ears.

The world went dark and wet.

He felt like he had been dumped off the side of a building, hurtling down through the water, up turning to down, right turning to left, and the little light from the hurricane skies disappearing entirely. The water abruptly changed from tepid to cold.

A current punched his gut, knocking more precious air out of his lungs. As the bubbles escaped his mouth, Lance’s terror turned into determination. Get air. Stay alive. The waves had somehow become less violent, enough to swim again. He spread his arms wide like an avenging angel and turned his head up.

He did some breaststrokes towards what he thought was the surface, but he couldn’t be sure until his head popped into air. He took a shaking breath in relief, tasting salt. According to his mom’s swimming lessons, the trick to surviving was staying relaxed and having a clear head. So Lance would be cool and stay afloat, imagining his mamá saying, “Now, lay on your back and let the water push you up, mijo.”

The image didn’t keep his heart buoyant for long though.

He was sure it had been daylight when he had been sucked into the water, but all around him was only darkness. The black water was like chipped onyx, the sky a churning but only slightly lighter black. The temperature was colder than any tropical climate had a right to be. It even smelled wrong, more moldy and less like clear fresh water and perfect beaches. The wind was there, but it had none of the hurricane’s rain.

“I’m… I’m not in Cuba anymore,” he said with strange clarity. He had spent all his 19 years living a stone's throw from Varadero Beach, swimming in the ocean from age one, and this was not his home. Somehow, his eyes prickled with warm water.

The doll he had clutched so hard in his fist was gone, as well as his shoes. Grimly, he tread water, going in a circle to see if there was any sliver of shore or land or anything in his line of sight. Nothing. Just black and more black ocean.

Hair plastered to his skull, he sucked his lower lip into his mouth.

“Okay Lance. You’ve got this. Just go with your gut. What seems like the best direction to go in?” He closed his eyes and spun around in the water. When he opened them, he started swimming straight out in a front crawl.

He did this for a good 30 minutes, his teeth chattering from the cold. But as long as he kept moving and held his head above the chilled water, he could maintain hope.  As he swam over wave after wave, he didn’t pause long enough to consider the possibility of drowning. That wasn’t an option. His family was probably frantic and looking for him. He couldn’t keep them waiting.

He could see in his mind his sister Neena’s saucy expressions turning to open-mouthed fear, his oldest brother pulling at his hair (he’d started to bald like their father), and his mamá trying to be brave for them all. Every Espinosa and Hervás in his family would be out looking, calling his name through the rain. Milagro would be distraught her favorite tío had gone missing while looking for her. She’d be inconsolable without her favorite stuffed animal.

Plus, he hadn’t had enough sex or kissed enough beautiful lips. And with how fantastic a kisser he was, that was a travesty.

Lance Antonio Espinosa y Hervás was not going to drown today!

As he took a break for air, he squinted into the darkness.

At first he thought he was seeing things and rubbed a fist in his eye, but that just made it sting with salt. Now looking with one eye, he peered into the distance to see rows and rows of flickering lights above the water. It looked like…

“A boat!” he shouted, slapping the water in excitement. Then he began swimming towards it in earnest. “Hey! Hey over here!” he would say every few strokes, though the boat seemed to stay far in the horizon

It wasn’t until 20 minutes later that he realized the boat hadn’t been as close as he anticipated. Also, it was huge!

It reminded him of the _Titanic_ film his sister Melissa had tearfully watched with him once. Layers and layers of steel rose above him, punctured by little glowing portholes. The light glowed in pinpricks against the black water, the only brightness in the night. The ship was bigger than any cruise liner he had ever seen.

“Hey!” he yelled up at the monolith, eyes widened in wonder as well as a bit of fear. The ship’s rusty sides groaned in response. “Hey, help! ¡Necesito ayuda!”

He heard something in the distance that sounded like voices and screamed louder. “I need help!”

The voices began to chatter amongst themselves. “A drifter!” a booming voice announced, followed by a shout of, “Hang on!” A bell tolled in the darkness.

A rope attached to a life preserver was tossed from the side, flying over Lance’s head and landing next to him. He put the inner tube around his body and gripped it for dear life as the rope was pulled taut. His legs scratched against the hull of the ship as he was hoisted up.

As soon as he was dragged to the rails, he pulled himself up, arms shaking in exhaustion. The man at the front of the line tugging Lance’s rope grinned broadly, an orange headband wrapped across his forehead. At the sight of his successful rescue, a cheer went up from the line of the people pulling the rope. Someone threw a worn towel around his shoulders, and Lance dazedly nodded in thanks.

“Welcome to the S.S. Lion’s Pride,” said the man at the front, extending a huge paw of a hand. “I’m Hunk. Who are you?”

“L-lance.” He managed, teeth clacking together. “Where are we?”

Lance usually wouldn’t trust people so quickly and would be a little concerned about what this huge boat was for (War? Refugees? Pirates?), but Hunk exuded such a friendly aura that it was hard not to trust him. Plus Lance was really, really cold.

Hunk’s friendly smile wavered. “That’s a good question buddy. I’ll let the captain answer that, but first let’s get you warmed up.”

Some of the people that had helped Lance up beamed at him beneath their patched beanies and woolen hats, but none stopped to talk. Almost everyone wore fingerless gloves, and not a single item of clothing was without patches or stitched-up holes. Lance for one found the lack of color in people’s wardrobe a bit depressing. Then again, it was hard to see much beyond the limited lights and a few barrel fires on the deck.

Besides the faded purple dye in a girl’s blonde hair as she blew on her container of noodles, the scene was drab. There was one red jacket among the dispersing crowd, and the only color on Hunk was his orange headband and a faded yellow sweater. A few children in ski jackets too big for them and shoes too small scuttled around his feet like crabs, looking up with bright eyes for a moment, and then hurried off.

A little figure farther down the rope line hurried forward as the rest of the chattering people scattered across the deck, off to do some sort of task or chore on this huge cobbled boat. He? Or was it she? He/she ran up in boots too large for them and clapped Lance on the back. “It’s been forever since we’ve had another drifter! What ocean did you come from? Was it during a storm? What kind of storm? What was the air temperature and the water and the wind speed? What was it like crossing over the…”

“Pidge, give the guy a second to breathe!” Hunk groused, slapping his hand down on Pidge’s head.They smiled with bright eyes under a thatch of golden brown hair and adjusted their glasses.

“Fine, but only until we get his hypothermia under control.”

“Hypothermia?” Lance squeaked in alarm.

“Okay maybe not hypothermia, but something close to it. I’m an engineer, not a doctor...mph!”

Hunk pulled the smaller crew member into his arms holding a hand over their mouth. “That’s enough.” He turned back to Lance, smiling as he kept Pidge writhing in his clutch. “Sorry, they do that sometimes. I’m going to take you somewhere warm. And Pidge,” he glared at them, and Pidge’s arms stopped flailing, “is going to be nice and not scare the new guy to death.”

Pidge grunted in acquiescence, and Hunk stood them back on the metal deck as easily as if they were a hollow mannequin.

“Follow me, and I’ll take you to the cabin Pidge and I share.”

Hunk began lumbering away, Pidge trotting in his wake, and Lance trailing behind. He took the chance to look around as they walked. His eyes had adjusted to the dim during his long time in the water, but the lights of the boat had blinded him once more. Only now did things come into better focus. Under the slate-grey and churning sky, the boat rocked to and fro beneath his feet. Every few steps they took, the material of the deck seemed to change from metal to rusted metal to occasionally planks of wood. Out of the corner of his eye, he spied what looked like the hatch of a sub, and then a white plastic piece of a speedboat like the ones that sometimes zipped around Havana Bay.

There were sails in the middle of the boat, but they weren’t in use at the moment. The deck was spotted with lean-to shelters covered in tarp and cloth and patched with every kind of material and occasionally a few smaller boats tied up by the rails. It was as if someone had taken all the ramshackle old boats in Cuba from every imaginable decade and fused them together with a battleship.

Most of the people churning around him, Pidge and Hunk included, were dressed in ramshackle layers of waterproof and knitted clothing, though a few had just enough ragged material to cover their bodies and not much more. Lance stood out in his havana shorts and button-down linen shirt.

Everyone was varying degrees of dirty, and Lance wrinkled his nose at a smell like Chinese food gone painfully bad. On Pidge’s pale skin the grime showed especially in streaks of dirt and grease and who-knows-what on their face. They looked back at Lance with their keen golden eyes, grinning as if they were just waiting for the chance to pounce on him with questions once Hunk was not around.

“So, drifter, what do you think of the place?”

“It’s…” Lance was unusually short on words. It was hard to talk around his chattering teeth. “Big. And nothing like the boats I know in Cuba. What’s a drifter?”

“A drifter is what you are, the people who show up floating in the ocean. Sometimes they come with boats, sometimes just the clothes on their backs. Sometimes they’re dead, but you were one of the lucky ones.”

If he hadn’t been found in time, he would be dead too. Lance grimaced at the thought.

Hunk nodded. “We all were drifters once. I was surfing off the coast of Samoa before I got here. Pidge was… where even were you, Pidge?”

“Bermuda Triangle.”

“Why would you go there?!” Lance peered at the smaller person, wondering how the hell they sailed halfway to Bermuda.

“Looking for my dad and brother. They were lost in the area on a marine biology expedition.”

“Oh. Oh yeah.” Lance didn’t know what to say to that.

“What were you doing in the ocean?” Pidge queried, ignoring the frown Hunk shot over his shoulder.

“Looking for my baby niece, Milagro. A hurricane was starting, and I was worried.” He pulled the towel closer around his shoulders, rubbing his arms. “I hope she’s okay.”

Hunk stopped to take Lance into a one-armed hug. “I’m sure she’s safe, buddy.”

The man’s bulk was such a comforting warmth against the cold, and although Lance didn’t quite believe his words, he hugged Hunk back with a worn smile.

Hunk let him back on the deck with a pat to the back and gestured grandly towards a rickety approximation of a door. “Welcome to our abode!”

Pidge pulled back the hammered together wooden boards with mocking pomp, and Lance shuffled in.

The inside was far more put-together, with a sturdy homemade bunk bed, a tiny desk, and scribbled on pictures and pages pasted on every inch of the wall and ceiling. A swaying gas lantern hung from a nail against the wall, lighting the scrawl all over posted papers. Lance was able to read “Multiverse proven?” with a red line towards “theory of relativity” and “similar gravitational constant” surrounded by long and strange equations before he sat down. There was also a strikingly good drawing of Hunk on the ceiling.

As he rubbed his hair with the thin white towel, Hunk bustled around to find the limited blankets and clothes they had to wrap Lance in, and Pidge sat their little butt right next to Lance.

Pidge reached into their satchel slung across their cable-knit sweater and brought out a thermos.

“Tea? It’s kind of cold, but it’s warmer than the water you were just in.”

Unscrewing the cap, Lance drank it greedily. Hunk handed him some jerky hidden from under the desk that was surprisingly delicious, even though Lance didn’t normally like dried meat. He could detect a hint of black pepper and cumin.

“Sorry for getting your clothes and blankets wet,” he apologized, shuffling in his damp spot on the bed.

Hunk shook his head as he wrapped another blanket and an additional jacket around Lance, finishing the look with a knitted hat. “No, we’re happy to help. It’s amazing that you survived.”

“Yeah, I’m a pretty badass swimmer. Best in Cuba.” Lance grinned, some of his real personality shining through as he became more relaxed and less cold and tired.

“Well, I doubt that,” Pidge said.

“Hey shortstack, have _you_ ever swum in Cuba?” Lance said, pointing a finger out of his cocoon at Pidge. “Didn’t think so.” They began to laugh, falling back on the bunk bed.

A slow smile stretched across Hunk’s face, and Lance dropped his fake pout to grin up at him.

Before Lance could voice the questions that had been spinning in his head since he’d landed in this new ocean, three knocks tapped on the flimsy door.

“Come in!” Pidge hollered, and at her call, the door flew open.

A red-haired mustached man barged in, looked around for a bit, and then locked eyes on Lance.

“Why ‘ello newcomer!” He grinned cheerily, mustache bristling. “Had to scour the ship to find you, though someone on deck said you would be with these two.”

Lance looked up at him dazedly, and the man’s smile widened all the more.

“The captain will see you now.”


	2. Chapter 2

Sitting on Hunk’s patched yellow comforter and bundled in Pidge and Hunk’s clothes, Lance blinked up blearily at this hyper ginger person. Even though he was wearing what looked like a pilot’s uniform, the seams were on the verge of coming undone along the lapel and shoulders. The navy blue of the fabric had faded to a dusty color. Despite the drabness of his outfit, his lapel pin, a pair of silver wings, was shined to perfection.

“Who are you?” Lance asked, and the ginger man laughed.

"First mate Coran, at your service!” The redhead bent in a bow that had no grace but was all seriousness, an arm extended out to his side as he dipped. Lance’s eyebrow arched. Pidge winced as Coran’s hand whacked the doorframe.

“Ouch, I didn’t see that there.” He shook the offending appendage, looking at the pinewood with distrust. “Blasted ship has such a motley structure. If we were on my plane from back in the day…”

“We would have no leg room and would probably be eating peanuts,” Pidge groused, but the first mate didn’t seem to hear them.

“...there would be plenty of room for a man to gesticulate!”

Hunk patted Lance on the back, nodding towards the newcomer. “He’ll take you to the Captain, who will be able to answer some of your questions. And keep on a coat and hat! We need to keep you warm for a few more hours.”

“Do I have to wear the hat though?” Lance patted the pom-pom on his head with a grimace.

“Yes. Along with this.” Pidge grinned. From the file cabinet they used for storage, they pulled out a pair of glasses with a fake plastic nose and an attached mustache. Lance looked between the costume glasses and the grinning midget and scoffed.

“No Pidge. No hazing the new kid,” Hunk tut-tutted, shaking his finger at his roommate.

Pidge pouted. “But who else am I going to haze?”

“Go bother someone in the engine room. I’m sure they need your help anyways.”

“Only if you come with!” Pidge grabbed Hunk’s hand, pulling the big guy after her as if he were as light as a stuffed animal. With a yelp of surprise, Hunk waved at Lance as they dashed off. “Let me know if you need anything! We’ll be on spar deck or in the engine room… oh my god, Pidge! Slow down!”

Coran chuckled and nimbly stepped aside as they rushed past him. “I’m afraid I didn’t get your name, my lad.” He extended a hand and Lance wormed an arm out of his layers of clothes to take it.

“Lance. But friends in Cuba call me the tailor because of how seamlessly I ride those waves.” He winked and Coran guffawed, slapping Lance on the back and making the boy sputter.

“I’m sure the captain will be happy to have you on board. Now, right this way!”

Without further ado, Coran marched off, and Lance hurried after him, shedding some of the clothes and blankets and closing the makeshift door carefully behind him.

As the first mate military stepped in front of him, leading Lance back the way he had come with Pidge and Hunk, Lance took the chance to look around a little more.

From several different smokestacks billowed huge puffs of steam, making Lance wonder what exactly this boat ran off of. It didn’t look like any cruise ship or freighter he had seen stop in Havana Bay, and some of the parts looked like pictures of WWII era vessels. Along with various structures above deck that seemed to serve as living quarters, Lance and Coran passed a weapon’s platform with a pair of 16 foot guns mounted on it next to the railing. A few feet beyond the guns was a harpoon launcher, rusty with age and creaking in the wind.

“As you can see, the Lion’s Pride is the product of many wrecks coming together as one. It was an impressive project, though the results…” Coran tutted, “leave some things to be desired. It was the best thing our engineers could do at the time without dry land to do proper work, so I suppose it suffices. My late father was a shipwright, and he would have called this vessel a dog’s dinner!” 

Lance nodded along as if he knew a rat’s ass about shipbuilding. Being from an island nation did not automatically grant him the power of boat-making.

“That right there,” Coran pointed to a lean-to on the bow side of the deck, “is partially made of the plane the Captain and I were riding when we came to this place. Can you see the aeroplane window and seat inside?”

A woman sat on the patched-up leather chair behind the cover of a blue tarp. As they walked past, Lance saw a glimpse of her nursing a baby at her bare, dirty breast, and averted his eyes. “Um, yes. You were a pilot?”

“Why yes. All… I mean, the Captain’s father Alfor was the head pilot. I was his co-pilot. We had the misfortune to be flying through the wrong kind of weather when one of our engines failed. Instead of crash-landing in the Pacific Ocean, we ended up here, in a place our radar couldn’t trace with all our systems offline.” He coughed into his hand, as if remembering himself. “But of course, the Captain can explain that all to you in a minute.”

They climbed up one of two sets of stairs that led to a higher deck where a large metal structure that looked more like the helm of a battleship stood in the middle, made of dark grey steel that stood out even under the cloudy sky. Coran grabbed a wheel on a steel door and grunted as he twisted it, allowing the hatch to open towards them with creaking protest. The hatch was thicker than Lance’s arm.

In the dim chamber, there were several crew members examining monitors, bustling around and messing with the various controls, but the figure at the huge wheel in the center of the room caught Lance’s attention. She stood with her back facing them, but when Coran called, she turned her head.

Despite her slightly ill-fitting clothes, the jacket looking as if it had been made for someone with broader shoulders and then cut down to size, she struck a regal figure. Lance helplessly found his eyes tracing the delicate line of her waist leading to the curve of hips and chest. Her white hair was tucked underneath a pilot captain’s cap and pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck, which should have looked schoolmarmish, but, on her, appeared noble. Her eyes were fierce blue, the color of the sea at noon in Havana.  

“You must be our newest arrival,” she said as Lance gawked, extending her hand. “Welcome to our vessel. I’m Captain Allura.”

He took a moment to blink himself out of his daze, then assumed what he thought was a sexy smile.

“Hello gorgeous, I’m Lance.” Lance seized her hand firmly with a grin. “At your service,” he added with a wink.

She drew her hand away in distaste. “Please, take a seat over there.” _Far away from me_ was the unspoken sentiment Lance could feel coming from her, but when had Lance ever shirked from a challenge?

“You’re probably wondering what this all is,” Captain Allura said slowly, pausing to gauge Lance’s reaction

“Well, yeah,” Lance shrugged, “but right now I’m wondering if this piece of perfection in front of me is available.”

The captain closed her eyes and pinched her nose bridge. “I’m not going to dignify that question with an answer.” She waved over her first mate. “Coran? Can you take it from here? He is wasting my time.”

“Hold up!” Lance got up from his seat, sitting back down once Allura’s eyes were turned on him again. “Okay, I’ll bite. What is this ship and where are we? Doesn’t look like the Caribbean or the Atlantic to me.”

“For starters, you couldn’t be farther from the Caribbean.” Her smile was thin, sharp. “This is the Lion’s Pride, originally composed of pieces from my father’s aeroplane. Where we are is a little more of a complicated answer.”

“No matter how far we sail, we will never reach land, my boy,” Coran said, stroking his mustache. “That’s the simplest way to put it. Some crew members have theorized, namely Pidge Holt whom you met earlier, that we are in an alternate dimension.”

Lance’s jaw dropped.

Allura smirked. “Most call this place Shuiguo, a Mandarin name given by the first pirates who were able to survive over a decade here. ‘Shuiguo’ can be read as ‘water land’ or ‘fruit’ depending on the characters used. The crew of the unnamed vessel liked to joke about the lack of fruit and the abundance of saltwater in this place. Though our daily struggle to find supplies is no laugh.”

“How… how long have you been here?”

Coran and the Captain shared a look. “Coran and I have sailed for over a decade. It took a good amount of time to amass this large of a crew, though we function more as a refugee ship than a pirate or war vessel. We will take any drifter on board if they abide by our rules.”

“We were fortunate the Captain’s father was flying a group of marine engineers to a conference when we hit a storm in the mid-Pacific. Alfor…” Coran paused, pulling at his mustache.

“My father didn’t survive. He drowned while rescuing me,” Allura said matter-of-factly, as if she had explained how to tie a piece of rigging instead of her father’s death. “The remaining engineers, Coran, and I were able to work together and make the first prototype of the SS Lion’s Pride. Now we are ten times the original prototype’s size with over 2,000 souls on board.”

“Wow,” Lance’s jaw dropped. “How were they able to put together a ship without dry land or the right tools? That’s pretty much impossible!”

“Coran and our head engineer could give you a better explanation, but it’s a long one. I’m actually surprised you haven’t asked the most common question yet.”

“And what’s that?”

“‘How can I get back to Earth?’ That’s the first thing people say.”

Lance’s expression sobered. “If you’ve been here for 10 years… there isn’t a way to get back, is there?”

“No.” Allura looked at him with a glimmer of pity in her steel blue eyes. “Not that we know of.”

His heart felt like a stone sinking in the cold waters outside the ship. Milagro, abuelita, mamá and papa, his oldest brother Lorenzo... Their faces and others flashed in his mind as he realized, _I might never see them again._ His eyes prickled with a feeling that let him know that not now, but later, he would cry long and hard and heaving.

Now wasn’t the time. So with a grimace, he nodded stiffly at the captain. “Where does that leave me?”

“Well as soon as we find you a cabin and a role to play on the ship, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like. You’ll have to earn your keep just like everyone else, of course…”

Allura cocked her head at the sound of shouting on deck. Somewhere in a the distance, the large bell rang.

“Two drifters in one day?” Coran wondered. “How is that even possible?”

Wordlessly, his Captain rose, adjusted her hat, and strode towards the door, accompanied by several other crew members. A flash of light-brown hair shone at the door, a blur of hasty movement.

Pidge’s small body interrupted Allura’s course, tiny arms splayed in the doorway.

“What are you doing above deck?” the captain asked.

“Had to grab something for Hunk. Plus, I need to have my nose in everything here.” The smaller person adjusted their glasses, peering up, up, up at Allura’s towering form. “And when I suddenly get off-the-chart electromagnetic readings, I’m interested.” Allura blinked as Pidge waved a beeping square device in her face, the three antennae almost poking her in the nose. “Come see!” Pidge grabbed her wrist and hauled her forward with a grin on their face. The personnel following Allura ran swiftly behind.

Coran shook his head, patting Lance’s shoulder to say, “Stay here. We’ll take care of this business,” before joining in the mad dash to the deck.

At a much slower pace, muscles aching from his battle against the waves, Lance trailed after them despite Coran’s dismissal. He arrived in time to see a line of crew members pulling at the same rope and life preserver that had fished Lance out of the drink, though this time, they seemed to be struggling with it.

Plenty of muscle-heavy men and women were heaving, and sweat streamed from their temples despite the cold. One man took off his ragged grey sailor’s jacket, and then resumed tugging on the reinforced line. Lance peered over the starboard side rails to see if he could glimpse their new catch, but it had grown so dark, he couldn’t make out much more than a blurry figure and some… purple?

Captain Allura surveyed the whole scene, not joining in the strange game of tug and war, but looking on with creases between her brows and around her mouth.

“I think we’ve almost got it!” shouted a wiry woman at the front. “Give it another tug, lads!”

And with a chorus of grunts and groans and a mighty heave, they tugged a limp body over the rails.

The large form flopped on the deck bonelessly, still clinging to a piece of purple flotsam in their arms. Long black hair with a blinding white streak covered most of their face and hung in heavy wet locks against their body.

Allura waved the rest of the crew away, approaching the figure, but as she grew closer, the figure’s arm began pulsing on one side, flashing electric bands of black lined with sparks of purple.

“Stay back!” the Captain warned, even as Pidge hurried forward to scan the energy source.

Lance sniffled and edged himself through the crowd to get a closer look, ever curious even when his whole body felt like dying. The man Allura was standing over stirred slightly, then groaned. It was a bad sound, like he had drunk nothing but seawater for days. “Holy crow,” Lance whispered. The rest of the crowd murmured and craned their necks to see.  
  
“He’s… still breathing.” Allura noted, through her mouth was stuck in a frown. For the first time since Lance met her, she looked unsure. She moved towards the source of the energy, and Lance suddenly realized that while one of the drifter’s arms was bleeding and bared to the elements, the other arm was made of metal.

He squinted for a minute, the gears in his brain turning, and then he gasped. The prosthetic was flickering with the same kind of energy Lance had seen in the wave that had taken him here.

“Sweet zombie Jesus!”

Allura turned Lance’s way, frowning. “Everyone. Back to your stations.”  
  
The Captain’s order was immediately followed, though Pidge made some grousing noises and scribbled down notes on the readings they had found before disappearing below deck. Lance, being too dazed and tired to do much else, just stared at the prone figure. He looked Asian maybe? But mostly this drifter looked awful. 10/10 in need of beauty sleep and a haircut, even though the guy’s gaunt figure had hunky potential.  
  
As he looked on, the crackling purple energy flared, and then died down to almost nothing. Allura tried poking it with the knife she had hidden in her jacket, nodding when she decided it was safe to touch.  
  
“Hunk, can you get together a group to carry him to cabin 5?” Lance hadn’t noticed Hunk standing behind him before, but the Samoan man nodded at his captain. “He’ll need to be under guard and medical supervision.”  
  
“Definitely. Is it okay if Lance stays in our cabin tonight? Pidge won’t sleep after discovering readings like that, so we’ll have an extra bed.”  
  
“Fine with me. Just make sure the newcomer and Lance get plenty of water and stay warm.”  
  
“Aye aye,” Hunk answered with a jaunty salute and a wink. Allura smiled, then regained her serious expression as she turned sharply to stride away, boots clacking on the deck.  
  
In a feat of impressive strength, Hunk picked up the stranger as if he was a sack of feathers, carrying him easily in his arms towards the starboard side of the ship.

Lance whistled. “Damn. Talk about all hat, _all cattle_ .”  
  
Hunk laughed and playfully flexed as he lowered the drifter onto a sleeping bag. Long hair splayed out, the man mumbled a little in his state of unconsciousness. The jostling hadn’t woken him at all. He reminded Lance of Sleeping Beauty, if Sleeping Beauty had a skunk streak and stubble. Some crew mates carrying medical gear came into the lean-to soon after Hunk dropped the man off to towel him down and monitor his vitals as Hunk guided Lance back to his cabin.

“Now let’s get you to bed too.”  
  
Lance released a puppy-whine at that. “But this is way too exciting! I’m on a humongo boat! I have so many questions! Do you have cows? How do you do food with no sun? Do you have plantains because I’m really craving fried…”  
  
The stocky crew member sighed. “Yes, we have a few cows, but half of that stuff I don’t know, and you need to rest!”  
  
Lance crossed his arms, thinking about putting up a protest, but before he could blink, Hunk had picked him up by the waist and slung his gangly body over a shoulder.  
  
“Nooo!” He weakly kicked his legs, but Hunk only chuckled, patting Lance on the small of his back and quickly getting them back to the safety of the cabin.

Lance sat down and waited while Hunk bustled around. Once Hunk set to work finding new dry towels and clothes that were either way too big for Lance or way too small, the emotional dam in Lance’s heart sprung a leak.  
  
The warmth of this little nook and the creaky bunk bed reminded him of sharing a room with Luis, his middlest brother. They would stay up late with flashlights and comics and occasionally fighting over the one DS their family could afford. There had been bright green sheets, old action movie posters, and the perpetual smell of socks. Four years ago Luis had moved to Miami, an ocean away from the family, and now…  
  
Miami had seemed far, but here Lance was, the homebody baby brother, a world apart from everyone. And there was no way to get back.  
  
One hot tear was followed by a second, leaking from his eyes down his cheeks and triggering a nasty trickle of snot too. He wiped at his face hurriedly, but the water was coming too fast and his shoulders had begun to shake with sobs.  
  
Hunk turned at the noise, brown eyes softening in understanding. Wrapping one more blanket around Lance’s shoulders, he opened his arms wide.  
  
“Come here, bud.” His sad smile was soft and inviting.  
  
This time, Lance didn’t hesitate, barreling in and clinging to the big man in a tight embrace. He felt comfortable and safe in Hunk’s folded body, safe enough to let the deluge inside of him pour out more and more. Hunk only rubbed his back and patted his head, making wordless sounds of comfort to help Lance along.  
  
He wasn’t sure how long they sat there, but when he was done, he was exhausted.  
  
As soon as Hunk ushered him back to bed and gave him some water and a towel to dry his face, Lance passed into a dreamless sleep.

 

* * *

 

Two unfamiliar voices murmured just out of the edge of Lance’s consciousness as he started to wake up. Red eyes cracking open, he found himself nose-to-nose with a wall of light brown wooden planks in a place that didn’t smell like home.  
  
He wrinkled his nose. “Wha…”  
  
“I think he’ll do well as a translator on board,” a crisp English accent said, and a man’s voice hummed in agreement.  
  
“Hunk did mention he was Cuban, and he's fluent in English as well. Should come right into use!”  
  
So they were talking about him. Turning on his stomach and pushing himself up, he yawned loudly as the mess of blankets fell off his shoulders. The speakers spun in his direction, a woman with flowing white hair with a man at her side. Lance stiffened as he remembered the details of the situation. In the middle of the ocean. On another planet.  
  
“How long have I been asleep?”  
  
“A day, my lad!” Coran was quick to answer.  
  
Lance groaned. “I feel like hot baked shit.”  
  
Captain Allura smiled wryly, handing him a thermos of water. “That is bound to happen when you swim in freezing waters and survive a trans-dimensional jump.”  
  
Lance drank greedily, and Allura awkwardly cleared her throat. “We had stopped by to decide where to assign you, but since you’re awake, we might as well give you the orientation debrief. After you decide on a position, you’ll need to go on a tour of the agricultural, engineering, and residential areas, as well as...” 

When a foghorn sound went off overhead, Lance yipped and covered his ears. Allura’s dangling earrings swayed as she jerked her head towards the noise.

The ship lurched heavily to the side, as if it had hit an iceberg. Alarm-bell type sounds started blaring from every direction.

“An attack?” Coran asked, yelling over the noise. “But why now?”

“We need to investigate.” Allura put a hand on Lance’s shoulder. “You, come with me.”

A pretty lady in uniform had just asked him to follow her, so of course, Lance nodded in agreement even as they hurried towards danger. On the open deck, the foghorn sound should have been softer, but instead it grew louder. Probably because the device making the sound was a funnel with a speaker right over their heads.

“Uh, I thought we were the only boat out here?”

“Well, you would be wrong,” Allura said, climbing to the roof of the makeshift bridge. She pulled a small telescope from a pocket and zoomed in. Lance squinted in the direction she was pointing to see if he could make anything out, but nothing appeared. She pulled it down and said into a walkie-talkie, “Several crew members are incapacitated. What do you see on your end, Coran?”

After a moment of static, Coran’s voice rang out, “Blasted pirates! I found the vessel that boarded us. There doesn’t seem to be room for more than one or two crew members though. I wonder why they were foolish enough to attack our ship.”

“I don’t know, but I mean to find out.”

Lance had taken her telescope from her lax hand to zoom in to the situation. With a gasp, he saw several crew members lying on the spar deck near the right railing about a hundred feet from the bridge entrance, clinging to their legs or bleeding from their sides.

“Who did this?”

Focused on her task, she ignored him. “Coran, we need to flush this pirate out. I think it’s only one man doing this, as unbelievable as it seems.” Allura grimaced.

“Right-o. Calling all hands on deck.”

The foghorn sound changed to a persistent _beep beep beep_ and every adult on deck came to attention while the children scattered to hide in rusty crevices and lean-tos.

Lance thought he saw a darker hooded figure dart between the crowd with purpose in the opposite direction most people were going, the black garb blending in with the monotone wardrobe of the crew.

But before he could voice his observation to Allura, the figure vanished. Lance had a second to gulp. He didn’t know more than four people on this ship, but that guy did not look like a Lion crew member.

“I think I saw something.”

“What?”

“I’m not sure, but it was headed towards us. I think it’s... “ Lance pointed to the left. “Somewhere in that crowd.”

Allura snatched her telescope back, but while she was looking, Lance heard a strange scraping noise, like metal supports screaming in protest. The roof under his feet bent with new weight, but before Lance could yell out, he felt a sharp pressure on his stomach.

An extra body’s warmth was pressed up behind him. Lance tried to speak, but a pale, thin arm wrapped tight around his jugular.

A voice whispered in his ear.

“Move and I gut you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess who has a righteous head cold rn yayyyy
> 
> "dog's dinner" means "making a mess of things" in British slang
> 
> all credit goes to 0rchidd for the lovely art of Allura's uniform! she made some other versions which I really love and will describe in later chapters. go tell her how awesome she is!  
> [0rchidd's tumblr](https://0rchiddart.tumblr.com/post/167631981514/concept-art-of-alluras-captain-uniform-for-the)

**Author's Note:**

> aaaaand here it is. wow.
> 
> this AU is partially based on an original story I came up with, so if it seems crazy, believe me, I know.  
> open to all the feedback. and we will meet Keith soon, so calm yourselves, sailors.
> 
> look for me at chipofmintchocolate on tumblr to come scream about dumb boys
> 
> edit: also all the thanks to 0rchidd for the fantastic fun fully fantasmimal fanart she made!  
> check out its gorgeousness here: https://0rchiddart.tumblr.com/post/167071459114/for-the-klancebb2017-yes-im-really-excited-to


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